Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/continuity-of-care-the-community-college-connection/5026350/
Imagine a child care center where parents drop their children off to the same teacher day after day for three, maybe even five, years. This teacher knows the children and all the things they love, and delights in their developing milestones and growth. Teachers and parents also form connections and teach each other about the children. This three-year relationship with the same teacher, which allows infants and toddlers to form deep connections, is known as continuity of care (Program for Infant/Toddler Care, 2017; Lally, 2013).
I teach early childhood education courses at a community college in North Carolina, and often I visit our students at the child care centers where they are employed. More often than not, I see that continuity of care is not used, despite a great deal of research that suggests it is an ideal organizing model for early childhood environments.
How might we get this concept into child care centers? One avenue is to educate the teachers through community college instruction. In North Carolina, the education requirements for lead child care teachers range from three semester hours of coursework to an associate’s degree, depending on how many points a center wants to earn toward the star rated licensure system ...